Some messages arrive from a five or six digit number instead of a full phone number. Your bank's fraud alert, a delivery notification, a two-factor code, an appointment reminder from a dentist. Those are short codes, and you cannot reply to them from your TelBuddy number.

The reply box will tell you so before you send anything. This page explains why, because the reason is not obvious and it is not something we can switch on for you.

What a short code is

A short code is a five or six digit number leased through the US short code registry. Businesses use them to send very high volumes of messages: millions of two-factor codes, delivery updates and appointment reminders a day.

They are built to send outward. A short code can receive a reply from a mobile handset, which is how "reply STOP to unsubscribe" works, but the carriers do not route messages to a short code from a regular business line.

Why your TelBuddy number cannot reply

Every TelBuddy number is a standard ten digit number, the same kind your customers use. US carriers do not deliver messages from a ten digit number to a short code. The message is rejected before it leaves the network.

This is a carrier rule, not a TelBuddy setting and not a Twilio or Telnyx setting. It applies to every virtual number provider without exception, and there is no plan or upgrade that changes it.

Would buying our own short code fix it?

No, and this surprises people.

Short codes cannot message each other either. Owning one would let you send high volume campaigns; it would still not let you answer your bank. They also cost roughly five hundred to a thousand dollars a month, take eight to twelve weeks to provision, and every carrier reviews the intended use case before approving it. They exist for mass sending, not for conversations.

What to do instead

Keep your personal mobile on file for banking and two-factor codes. A reply from a real handset reaches a short code normally, because that traffic travels the consumer path rather than the business one. This is the fix for fraud alerts where you must answer YES or NO.

Call instead of replying. Most fraud alerts include a phone number, and calling is usually faster than the text exchange anyway.

Use the company's app. Most banks now let you approve or decline a transaction in the app, which does not depend on SMS routing at all.

Forwarding the alert to your mobile and answering from there does not work. The sender matches your reply against the number it originally texted, and a reply from a different number is not recognised.

Which numbers are affected

Anything that is not a full phone number:

Five and six digit senders such as 62966 or 32665
Named senders such as VERIFY, CHASE or INFO, used mainly outside the US
Any sender shorter than a standard subscriber number

Full ten digit numbers, including toll free ones, can always be replied to normally.

Why this matters when choosing a business number

If you plan to use a TelBuddy number as the contact number on file with banks, payment processors or anything using two-factor authentication, keep a personal mobile registered for those accounts. Many banks reject virtual numbers for two-factor authentication anyway, and this routing limitation is one of the reasons.

Everything else works normally. Customers, suppliers, staff and anyone texting from a real phone can be answered exactly as you would expect.